Ducks have an extremely diverse pallet. In their native areas, which is to say, all over the world near fresh water, ducks have been known to eat pond plants and fish, frogs, slugs, and many other things that won’t interest a chicken. Here at Eat The Sand, our Pekin ducks have been seen eating lizards, palmetto bugs, earwigs, and anything else that crawls into their enclosure. They have a fondness for sifting through the sand underneath their polls, looking for bugs and plant sprouts.
While their diet consists mostly of layer crumble, water hyacinth, and their favorite, duckweed, we have given the ducks some other known edible plants including gingers, cannas, duck potato, tradescantias, and sages, all of which were gobbled up. Ducks prefer all plants to be chopped up to duck beak sized portions, as they will not be bothered to break leaves off of stems unless they are either really bored or really hungry.
Duck Safe Plants for Fodder in Florida:
Water Hyacinth (Eichhornia crassipes)
Duckweed (Lemnoideae spp.)
Duck Potato (Sagittaria latifolia)
Cattails (Typha spp.)
Wandering Trad, Spiderwort, Purple Heart (Tradescantia sp.)
Tropical Sage, Swamp Sage (Salvia spp.)
Soap Ginger, Cardamom Ginger, Shell Ginger (Zingiber spp.)
We have never given our ducks water lettuce but it is supposed to be well-received by them.